Posts Tagged ‘reggae’

One of the more fascinating cultural exchanges of 20th century’s popular culture was the huge impact Italian-made spaghetti westerns of the 1960’s – aimed for the European and US markets – had on Jamaican music. It took them a while to reach the Jamaican shores – on average it seemed like a three year delay – but once there there is no overstating the influence this new wave of cinema had on the musicians and producers.

Pretty much every title and character you can think of seemed to have at least one song written in their honor (to be quickly recorded and shipped off to the UK where the kids bought the 7″ records by the tons), with Lee van Cleef ranking highest, and Franco Nero‘s coffin-dragging Django coming in at close second – actually generating a Top Five hit for The Upsetters!

I assembled a couple of personal faves off of YouTube for you to peruse – some having pretty damn cool fan videos. Check out Trojan Records‘ 2004 compilation album The Big Gundown for more goodies.

Now how can you not be flattered by criticism like that? I ask you. Dare you even. I’m excited to say that The Norliss Tapes video for Groovy is sure starting to climb in amount of views on YouTube. I’m stoked as hell and thank everyone involved for agreeing to do this. Keep sharing!

You know the phrase “stoked”? Well, I’m no bitter old man (although I do unleash The Angry Old Fart every once in a while) and I consider myself to have most of my childhood enthusiasm intact, but I still think words like “stoked” or “awesome” have become a bit overused. A bowl of corn flakes is nice for breakfast but calling it “awesome” might be taking it a bit too far. That said I am stoked and thrilled to announce the premiere of The Norliss Tapes video for Groovy featuring the cast of The Adventures of Superseven and Sandra West! Yes! Yes! Yes!

The second installment of what I call The Trilogy of Awesomeness, this idea was born early on as I am a fan of the series, but it took some time for me to finally muster up the courage to email Robert and Jerry that produce the series asking if this was doable. To my surprise they said yes and a short while later I had all the footage needed to edit the video. How cool is that of them? I know there’s still a couple of weeks left, but so far this video is the most fun I’ve had in 2012. Awesome!

Anyway, as an added bonus we decided to make this a free download for fans of the band as well as the series. It’s roughly 335 MBs and you can get it here. Please share the link. If you have YouTube both Norliss and the S7 crew would appreciate you sharing the video and don’t forget to check out the Herz und Liebe EP on Bandcamphere.

UPDATE: Director Robert Griffith created an event on Facebook for the video, so please join up here and share among your friends etc. We’ll all appreciate it. Thanks!